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'Reelgeezers' = poster duo for Oscar geezers?

February 12, 2008 |  3:00 pm

Uh oh! Those "reelgeezers" YouTube stars claim they're Oscar voters and they're blabbing their choices all over the web in defiance of academy rules. If you believe, like some people, that those cranky octogenarian pros (see their L.A. Times profile here) are actually old hipsters offering frank takes on current film topics, then you may be amused when one of them dismisses "American Gangster" just because it's "too dreary." However, there are so many similar real geezer comments throughout their two Oscar videos that at last we may have discovered the prototypes for the ultimate, out-of-touch fuddy-duddies who allegedly comprise a huge chunk of the Oscar electorate. Are Marcia Nasatire and Lorenzo Semple joshing us?

Freely, one or both of them admits that they haven't even bothered to watch some nominated films like "Gone Baby Gone, " "Assassination of Jesse James" and "Elizabeth: The Golden Age. "

At least Marcia feels guilty about it. At one point she says she won't vote in the supporting actor race because she hasn't seen "Jesse James. " However, not seeing "Elizabeth" doesn't seem to preclude her from voting for best actress. She lets us know that she's still trying to decide who she'll pick.

 

While fessing up about the latter film, she says, "I'm embarrassed to say I didn't see it." And why should she? "I still love Bette Davis playing Elizabeth," she adds, dreamily, as if recalling in her mind's eye the rosy days of her youth when she saw "The Virgin Queen" at the nickelodeon moviehouse. Apparently, Oscar voters back then didn't like that Queen Elizabeth movie very much, though. Bette wasn't nominated. "They gave it to her for 'Bill of Divorcement' or some title like that," Marcia adds, but no, no, no. Bette wasn't in "Bill of Divorcement." That was Katharine Hepburn, who didn't win for it either. She wasn't even nominated for it, in fact, but let's not let our minds wander as far off as Marcia's does.

What's really memorable, and adorable, about Marcia is when she gets all worked up over "Raging Bull" losing best picture to "Ordinary People" because, back then, the academy wasn't edgy enough. Elsewhere in these videos, however, she pooh-poohs the edgy performances given this year by Daniel Day-Lewis and Johnny Depp in favor of George Clooney — "a pretty face and that's nice." Despite the fact that there are some edgy screenplay choices like "Juno," she prefers mainstream "Michael Clayton," adding, "That would get my vote."

Not Lorenzo, though. With a lustful wink in his eyes, he says of "Juno's" screenwriter: " Anybody named Diablo Cody and is a stripper is hard not to vote for." The 85-year-old self-professed geezer also gets excited by the thought of that youngish, 66-year-old babe Julie Christie, when he's dishing the best actress race. Clearly, he has the highest ideals of the academy in mind when he admits that, "Out of being drunk and loyal, I have to vote for Julie Christie.

"I must make a personal disclosure," he adds, rattling that cane between his knees. "Recently she was my dinner partner at a small dinner. I was so awed by it that I drank too much wine and don't remember what I said and so I'm certainly very happy to vote for her."

When sizing up Viggo Mortensen's performance, Lorenzo can't look past "his endowment" during the nude scenes in "Eastern Promises." "That seems to be the chief thing of his performance to me," he insists.


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